When reported by adolescents, parental involvement in the adolescent’s school life and having a mother that yells at you were significant. Lack of parental involvement in school has been shown previously to be associated with adolescent behavior problems, and yelling is a well known family stressor and supports the finding reported here . Other significant variables were identical between the two models. That is, having a lot of close friends , and peers that model gateway drug use. The discrepancy between adolescent and parent reports is an innovative finding, and suggests that adolescents may provide a more accurate estimate of parenting practices than do parents. Other studies have shown that discrepancies in perceptions between adolescents and their parents may be negatively related to adolescent adjustment, including increased levels of conflict and stress within the family resulting in problem behaviors . Although this study’s objective was not to test how discrepancies predict problem behaviors in adolescents, adolescent perceptions should be considered with or preferentially over that of parent’s estimates of their parenting practices. To this end, Barnes and Farrell suggest that reliance on one respondent in the family represents a common methodological shortfall in many studies, especially when there is not perfect agreement between adolescent and parental perspectives. Findings reported here suggest that in addition to nonconcordance between parents and adolescents, there is a difference in the predictive value of these reports. In terms of impact on future studies, it should be noted that the true parenting behaviors in this study remain unknown. That is, both parent and adolescent reports are subject to error and may include biases. Pelegrina et al. state that adolescents assess certain family characteristics more negatively than their parents,plant grow trays whereas the parents’ self-reports tend to exaggerate certain dimensions, such as acceptance and discipline.
Future studies of the influence of parenting behaviors should incorporate more state of the art objective observational procedures to advance the current state of the science and determine the true parents’ parenting practices. To the extent that such procedures and innovations are incorporated, scientific understanding of parental influence on children will be clarified. The findings from this study should be interpreted in the context of the sample’s limitations. The study sample, though entirely Latino, was not population-based and only represented data from mothers. Whereas these findings may not be generalizable to the Latino population at large, they do speak to the need for the development of more refined measures of parenting practices. Nevertheless, the use of an entirely Latino sample of parents and adolescent dyads represents an important feature of this study, making it a valuable addition to extant literature. Adolescent gateway drug use continues to be a serious problem, contributing to immediate and long-term health consequences and costs to society . Decades of research on uptake of these substances have identified significant individual and social-level risk factors. However, ecological influences have only recently been explored. Recent advancements in software programs that use geographic information systems technology provide the necessary tools to conduct innovative exploratory analyses of ecological influences on gateway drug use. Recent reports regarding adolescent tobacco acquisition suggest that drug products are usually provided by three common sources: a stranger who buys them, family or friends who buy or give them, or a retailer who sells them . Some studies indicate it is easy for adolescents to buy both alcohol and tobacco . Indeed, the California Department of Public Health and Tobacco Control reports that one of the simplest ways for adolescents to buy tobacco is in their local neighborhood store. Data from the American Lung Association indicate that 33% to 50% of San Diego County retailers sell to adolescents . At least three issues should be considered with respect to retailer impact on substance use. First, adolescents are sensitive to cost, including the cost of time spent traveling to purchase products in other neighborhoods . They may also have unreliable transportation and limited spending money.
Frequent use or use of multiple substances may require more disposable income than would be true for youth who use drugs infrequently or only use one substance, e.g., alcohol. Youth who use drugs frequently or many different drugs may have less disposable income to invest and would be more sensitive to the distance from home to a retail business from which alcohol or tobacco could be purchased. Second, substances for first time use are usually not purchased by the adolescent experimenter, and instead may be provided at partiesor group gatherings. Users under these conditions may be less influenced by retailer proximity to their home. Third, retailer presence may provide a critical link to facilitate social processes in a given neighborhood. For example, modeling is a known risk factor for substance use, and seeing other adolescents purchase and use alcohol and tobacco may prompt consumption . The effects of retailer dispersion may be due to increased availability to substances, but it may also relate to increased opportunities for modeling, imitation by substance use, which can then be reinforced by peers. In their introduction of a community systems approach, Treno & Holder identify a limitation with group/individual-level prevention efforts. Mainly, such approaches are effective when the conditions that give rise to undesirable behavior lie solely within the target group, or individual, e.g., lack of knowledge. Indeed, education and awareness prevention efforts have historically been very popular . Nevertheless, efforts that focus entirely at such levels fail to demonstrate long-term results in circumstances where behavioral determinants extend beyond the individual, e.g., policies, alcohol and tobacco access, peer modeling, etc. Uptake and consumption of substances during adolescence is the result of many influences outside the purview of the individual. Despite the rational for environmental approaches, and the compelling evidence of environmental correlates associated with risky substance use practices, proven interventions are still limited in number. Indeed, structural environmental factors rarely makes it past the stage of a theoretical construct to inclusion in analytical models . This is in part due to the relevant infancy-stage of development . Notwithstanding this infancy, various theoretical models have emerged that attempt to address these environmental influences.
The Behavioral Ecological Model is based on the notion that behavioral determinants reside in the environment. Operational measures of Intra personal factors are difficult to validate and therefore excluded from the model that also explicitly assumes that ignoring such individual-level variables does not compromise prediction or control of behavior, thereby placing behavioral causes in the environment . In light of reports describing gender differences with respect to tobacco acquisition,custom grow rooms and the recent reports about the relationship between retailer presence and high risk behaviors, surprisingly little work has been done to highlight differences on this dimension between boys and girls. The purpose of this exploratory study based on the BEM and previous work by Pokorny et al. was to compare gender differences on the relationship between gateway drug use and variables representing both structural and social environments. Alcohol, tobacco and marijuana use variables were selected from a cross-sectional interview of Latino adolescents along the California/Mexico border in San Diego County. Demographic and peer modeling variables were also selected from the interview. A measure of alcohol and tobacco retailer dispersion was calculated from retailer location data obtained through the San Diego County Department of Environmental Health Food & Housing Division . Gateway drug use was regressed using least squares regression on 8 independent variables representing both structural and social environmental influences .The sample of 226 Latino adolescents in this study were students ages 13 to 19, attending high school in south San Diego County, who tested positive for latent tuberculosis infection , volunteered to participate in a medication adherence trial, and planned to receive treatment of their infection in the United States . Data were collected between 2004 and 2005. Participation in this study was limited to adolescents with a residential address in the US. After obtaining informed consent, trained bilingual staff completed a baseline interview in the participant’s home. Age, gender, and acculturation were selected to represent demographic characteristics. Acculturation was measured using the Bidimensional Acculturation Scale for Hispanics . The acculturation scale consists of 24 questions regarding language use , linguistic proficiency , and electronic media use . Each question had four possible responses: very poorly, poorly, well, or very well. The questions were separated into 2 domains, Hispanic and non-Hispanic , with 12 items in each. For each cultural domain, an average of the 12 items was calculated, obtaining a mean range of scores between 1 and 4. Scores on both domains were used to determine the level of acculturation. Acculturation categories were computed using a 2.5 cutoff score to indicate low or high level of adherence to each cultural domain. Individuals scoring higher than 2.5 in both domains were considered bicultural . The participant residential address was geocoded in ArcView 9.2.
Geocoding refers to the process of creating a point along a roadway segment that defines the location of any given address. A quarter-mile street network buffer was then created around each participant’s residential location or point. This buffer was intended to reflect the “walking neighborhood,” or those locations where the participant could easily walk to access various nearby alcohol and tobacco retailers. Currently no standard exists to define a buffer size that appropriately reflects “neighborhood;” however, given the typically limited travel choices of adolescents, the area within a 5-minute walk of his/her home can reasonably be considered a highly accessible area. The quarter mile distance was developed assuming a walking speed of 3.4 miles/hour . One previous study used a circular buffer of 0.5 miles . Buffers created using distances along the street network, such as that employed in the current study, exclude areas of the urban environment that are not accessible via roadways, and are generally considered to more accurately reflect those locations that are truly accessible. US Census Bureau data were obtained from San Diego Geographic Information Source , and used to identify neighborhood characteristics. Items were selected using an adaptation of an approach employed by Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls and mostly represent indicators of neighborhood poverty . The values used in this study were: 1) percentage of families living below the poverty level, 2) percentage of unemployment, 3) percentage of adults with a high school diploma, 4) percentage of owner occupied homes, 5) percentage of the population under 18 years of age, 6) percentage of homes headed by a single mother, and 7) percentage of Hispanics. The neighborhood characteristic variables from SanGIS were available by Census Block Groups , a census geography that reflects aggregations of several Census Blocks. Since the participant’s neighborhood buffers were irregular and did not fall exactly on the boundaries of the CBGs, it was necessary to estimate Census variable values within each participant’s buffer using a method referred to as “apportioning”. This procedure involves calculating the proportion of each CBG that overlaps with a neighborhood buffer and then using that percentage to factor each respective Census variable. For example, if a participant’s neighborhood buffer included 25% of one CBG, 55% of another, and 20% of a third CBG, then these percentages were used to weight the census values associated with each CBG to develop a unique value more closely aligned with the boundaries of the neighborhood buffer. This is a recognized approach to adjusting Census data so that it more accurately reflects a unique, non-census geography.This study analyzed retailers from the 2004 database, and was limited to convenience stores. Retailers that did not sell alcohol and tobacco were removed. The retailer address was geocoded using ArcView 9.2 and then used to create a measure of retailer dispersion: distance to nearest retailer from each participant’s residential location. Distance to the nearest retailer was calculated using the Network Analyst function in ArcView, which is capable of finding and then measuring the distance of the shortest roadway path between a given participant’s residential point and the nearest retailer point. This variable demonstrated a non-normal distribution and required transformations to reach normality.